Chronicling DC’s Underground Rap Scene with Oddisee

Oddisee has been on a mission to put D.C.’s rap scene on the map for over 20 years. “We're all too familiar with other iconic cities in hip-hop, like Atlanta, New York, Houston, and Los Angeles. I’m trying to do my part to make that normal in the DMV as well.”

Along the way he’s become one of the DMV’s longest reigning underground hip-hop lyricists and beatmakers, released about 20 projects, toured with the Roots, and helped make D.C. a music mecca in its own right.

His most recent music video with fellow local Heno. spotlights the iconic Takoma Park carryout Peter’s Sub Shop (with the DMV’s best mumbo sauce 🤐). In one of his breakthrough records, the 2011 beat tape “Rock Creek Park,” he masterfully paints a sonic portrait of D.C.’s biggest green space. “Beach Dr.” will transport you straight to a sunny window-down drive on the parkway.

Born Amir Mohamed el Khalifa at Howard University Hospital, Oddisee grew up finding his own DMV landmarks across Adelphi, Takoma, Silver Spring, Upper Marlboro, and D.C. In the early 2000s — before social media — Oddisee, along with any other beltway hip-hop heads, had to flock to the city to find their people.

“If you listened to rap and you wanted to rhyme, it was a very small scene. It was pretty much the U Street corridor and 18th Street. That was our watering hole,” he explained.

Oddisee credits a host of rhymers before him — Poem-Cees, Priest Da Nomad, and Black Indian — for creating the DMV’s underground rap infrastructure, mostly through open mics. For the first time, D.C.’s independence from the larger entertainment industry in New York or LA was actually a positive.

Oddisee with the Good Company. (Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)

“As powerful a city D.C. is, it’s not necessarily known as being a creative hub. We didn't have the sheer population to support niche music,” said Oddisee. “That created something beautiful because no matter what style of rap you did, you had to share space.”

It’s not exactly a hot take. Local punk historian John R. Davis told us that D.C.’s place outside the belly of entertainment helped its punk zine scene get off the ground, H Street’s hottest new club Transmission thinks it makes our scene more authentic, and it’s how local band April + Vista said they found their unique genre-less D.C. sound.

Oddisee isn’t just an underground sound smith, but an underground historian and ethnomusicologist. He attributes D.C.’s unique melting pot of musical influence to the Great Migration — when millions of Black people left a Jim Crow-entrenched South in the 1900s.

“Most Black people from the DMV originate from the Carolinas and Virginia. So we have this heavy southern influence in D.C.,” explained Oddisee. “ A high level of musicality comes from where we're from, it wasn't something we discovered solely through electronic production processes.”

For Oddisee, this manifests through go-go influence. His band, the Good Company, is full of D.C. scene veterans. The full scope of their musicality, from go-go to hip-hop to jazz, is on display in their 2020 Tiny Desk (Home) Concert. “The music always had this live influence and that definitely came from go-go,” Oddisee said. “It came from being a music mecca.”